All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [183]
When we first met he was living in a small two-room apartment on West Fifty-fifth Street. One of the rooms served as an office. Anne, a young Jewish girl from New Jersey, was his assistant and secretary. One day we were on the way to the airport and Georges offhandedly remarked, “Did I tell you that Anne has decided to change her name?” It was his way of telling me they were getting married.
As for Night, despite Mauriac’s preface and the favorable reviews in the French, Belgian, and Swiss press, the big publishers hesitated, debated, and ultimately sent their regrets. Some thought the book too slender (American readers seemed to prefer fatter volumes), others too depressing (American readers seemed to prefer optimistic books). Some felt its subject was too little known, others that it was too well known. In short, it was suggested over and over again that we try elsewhere. Refusing to lose heart, Georges kept trying. In the end Hill and Wang agreed to take the risk. Arthur Wang won me over with his lack of concern for things commercial. He still believed in literature as others believe in God. His zest for life deeply impressed me. Sensitive, he listened in depth the way some read in depth. If he didn’t like a work, he said so, but gently. “I can’t promise you millions,” he said, “but I’ll do a good job, meaning the best I can.” He kept that promise. The American edition sold a couple of thousand copies in its first two years, but it attracted a certain amount of attention. When other houses later offered us better terms for Dawn and The Accident, Georges and I decided to stay with Hill and Wang.
In Paris Paul Flamand, head of the publishing house Le Seuil, introduced me to George Steiner. Brilliant, incisive, blessed with writing gifts and fluent in several languages, he was the kind of intellectual who enjoys arousing hostility. At ease in both ancient and modern cultures, he upset the Israelis by hailing the Diaspora. “Man is not a tree,” he declared; ever in motion, he seeks the roots of knowledge in more than one place.
In Haifa, during a conference on the Holocaust, he managed to alienate the survivors in the audience. The Auschwitz experience, he said, could best be conveyed in German, and gave as example the work of the poet Paul Celan. While reaffirming my affection for him, I pointed out that German was also the language of the killers, and that the great documents on the tragedy had been written in Yiddish and Hebrew. That said, I admired his original way of treating the most complex subjects. George Steiner is a man with a restless soul whose search is never-ending.
Scoops are relatively rare in journalism, and in 1962 fortune smiled upon me, allowing me to outdo my colleagues. The story concerned a boy named Yossele Shuchmacher, whose grandfather, believing the parents were neglecting the boy’s religious education, kidnapped him “to save his soul.” The event turned Israel upside down. The residences of presumed suspects were searched, extremist sects were closely watched, but with no result. Not only was public opinion aroused, Yossele became a national obsession. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion ordered the Israeli secret services to conduct a worldwide search, exhaustively investigating all Jewish communities and infiltrating ultraorthodox circles. The operation was directed by Issar Harel, legendary chief of the Mossad, the man who supervised the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. But the most famous boy in Israel had disappeared, swallowed up by the guardians of fanaticism.
Dov phoned me every week. “Anything at your end?” There never was. “Rumor has it he’s in Brooklyn,” Dov told me. But Brooklyn is a big place. “Use your contacts with the Lubavitch Hasidim. I think they’re up to something.” My contacts laughed. They were conducting their own inquiry, for they were just as eager as Ben-Gurion to find the boy whose disappearance was an embarrassment